S6 E19 - Ripping Up the Carpet

We have had quite the week. The dryer broke. The car needed replaced. The carpet is being ripped up. All of these things were not worth trying to patch and fix - we needed something new. 

Our spiritual journey right now is the same. We are stained and destroyed on account of sin. Jesus didn't come simply to patch us up - he came to rip out the old and make us new in him. 

#SetYourMindAbovePodcast

Transcript

What if I told you that God could be seen in the most ordinary things every day? 

What if I told you that every day, ordinary events could teach us extraordinary eternal truths? Would you believe me? 

 Welcome back to season 6 of the Set Your Mind Above Podcast! My name is BJ Sipe, and I am a Christian, a preacher, a husband, and a father. In our next few moments together, we hope to learn some of the most important lessons from some of the simplest things in life. Thank you for taking this journey with me.

It has been quite the week here at the Sipe household after returning back to North Carolina. It started on the drive home, when we started to feel quite warm with about a couple hours to go left. It was then that we realized that our A/C was no longer blowing cold. Thinking it would be a simple freon issue, I didn’t think much of it, and we made do until we got home and could add some freon. That didn’t fix it. It turns out we have a serious leak in the A/C compressor, and it all needs replaced. That left us with a decision that we had to make. Our Flex is not worth but maybe five grand at the most, and the mileage has crossed that line that the vast majority of past owners start having frequent and major problems (which we have been having one after another). So rather than throwing more money at a car that’s not worth it and won’t fix our dependability issues, we have a newer car being delivered to our home on Monday, and they will simply take the Flex off of our hands. We decided cutting our losses was the best and safest option in the long run. 

Well, that wasn’t the only thing that bit the dust upon arriving home. I went to take the laundry out of the dryer that I had cycled through before leaving for North Carolina, and it was still soaking wet and needed rewashed. Thinking maybe I had maybe just not turned it on, we tried again later on with another load…and there was absolutely no heat. This was a refurbished dryer that we had purchased no more than 8 months ago because our previous dryer had broken as well. In fact, we’ve gone through four dryers in 7 years – we’ve had just the worst luck. And so, I was left with the same kind of decision: do I call a repair man and throw money at a refurbished dryer that’s simply not worth it? Or do we just cut our losses and get a new dryer? We decided on the later, and a new dryer was delivered earlier this week just in time for us to start cycling through the mountain of laundry that had piled up. 

But the biggest undertaking this week has been what Kylie has been wanting to do for years: ripping up the old carpet and putting down wood flooring to match the rest of the house in each of the bedrooms. This carpet is seven years old, and the average life of carpet today is right around five from what we learned from the flooring guys this week. Now I want you to imagine the wear and tear that our carpet has seen in our household with three kids and three pets. It’s had blood stains, coffee stains, poop stains, pee stains, puke stains, and all kinds of other things we’ve thrown at it. The rocking chair in Finley’s room had a bearing break and left oil stains all underneath of where the chair sat. For years we have shampooed and vigorously cleaned and vacuumed the carpets on a regular basis…but after a while, it just wasn’t cutting it anymore. It was time for a change – and a significant one. When you put down new flooring, you can’t just lay down wood flooring on top and cover it up – nor will it work to just keep trying to clean and patch the old carpet. You’ve got to completely rip out the old carpet down to the subfloor and start with something brand new. But now that it’s just about all put in, we’ll have a floor that won’t retain the stains and the mess. 

There are so many applications to pull from the events of this week in our life, but allow me to share just a few with you for today. We read in Ephesians 4:20-24, “But that is not how you came to know Christ, assuming you heard about him and were taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, to take off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.” The Flex did not start a mess – it was a good and new car at one point. The dryer, likewise, and the carpet likewise was once new and functional and stain free. In the same way, this is how all of us started in this life. None of us were born sinful, contrary to popular belief with the false teaching of inherited sin. When God formed and fashioned us, we were free from sin: brand new, perfect, and spotless. But something happened over time: we were corrupted by deceitful desires, and the longer we live the more stained and tainted we become with sin. And just like throwing money at an old car, an old dryer, or some old carpet cannot solve the problem, no matter how hard we try to cover up our sin, patch it, or deal with it on our own in our lives, it cannot fix the problem. Our sin remained. We were incapable of dealing with our sin alone – we needed someone that is able to cleanse us and remove the sin from our lives. We needed Jesus. 

But Jesus did not simply come to deep clean our souls, so to speak…he came to rip out the old and establish the new. There is only one answer to the problem: we’ve got to completely get rid of the old man. That is what the text of Ephesians told us, and we read complimentary passages to this as well in places like 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!” Jesus did not simply come to save us from the consequences of our sins, but the very practice of our sins. The old man is not to remain; he is ripped out and put to death. The old me that walked in the ways of the world is good for nothing, and as such he must be crucified along with Christ. Instead, Jesus establishes something new in us – a new man, so to speak. One that is being made after the very likeness of God in righteousness and purity. Or as Paul would say in Galatians 2:20, “For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

Being made new in Christ comes with the single greatest blessing of this life: access to his grace. While we are called to walk worthy of the calling to which we’ve been called, it does not mean that we will walk perfectly. We are still going to make mistakes, just like we are still going to have spills and accidents on these new wood floors. But so long as we are willing to repent and confess our sins to Christ, he is willing and able to cleanse us through his grace – and our sin is gone. John tells us in his first letter, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) Putting down new wood floors is certainly not a license to create messes – if we continued in that it would destroy them, just as if we continue in sin, we destroy what Christ died to make new. John would go on to clarify this in chapter 2:1-2, “My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the righteous one. He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.”

My friends, there is no greater blessing than grace. We are helpless to save ourselves from our sins, from all of the ways that we had corrupted ourselves by the ways of this world and stained our souls. But Jesus can save us. He can make us brand new. He can continue to cleanse us from all sin when we are willing to repent and turn back to him. Let us conclude with the words of the Hebrew author in 4:16, “Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need.”

This has been season 6 episode 19 of the Set Your Mind Above Podcast – and I’m so thankful that we had this time to grow together! A new episode is dropped each Friday of the week. If you’re able to, go ahead and like and subscribe to the podcast, give us a good rating, and tune in next week. Even more important, share the spiritual truths that we learned today with someone else. And more than anything my friends, always remember the following: know that I love you, that God loves you, and may we all each and every day set our minds above.